Social Media’s Junkies and Dealers

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, the threat from Internet platform monopolies should be a top concern for attendees. For the sake of restoring balance to our lives and hope to our politics, it is time to disrupt the disrupters.

NEW YORK – We were warned. The venture capitalist and Netscape founder Marc Andreessen wrote a widely read essay in 2011 entitled, “Why Software Is Eating the World.” But we didn’t take Andreessen seriously; we thought it was only a metaphor. Now we face the challenge of extracting the world from the jaws of Internet platform monopolies.

I used to be a technology optimist. During a 35-year career investing in the best and brightest of Silicon Valley, I was lucky enough to be part of the personal computer, mobile communications, Internet, and social networking industries. Among the highlights of my career were early investments in Google and Amazon, and being a mentor to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg from 2006 to 2010.

Each new wave of technology increased productivity and access to knowledge. Each new platform was easier to use and more convenient. Technology powered globalization and economic growth. For decades, it made the world a better place. We assumed it always would.

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Whose fault? And what about solutions? My short reaction is that evading those questions mostly short circuits Mr McNamee's complaints about Facebook. The first question is important because Mr McNamee contributed so much towards making things worse, but I'm only going to write a little bit about corporate cancerism here. Instead, I want to focus on the second question, because a problem with no solution is essentially meaningless.

Corporate cancerism is what replaced the dead economic philosophy called capitalism. Unlike communism, which died an unnatural death of its own making, capitalism was murdered by religious zealots. Their creed? "There is no Gawd but profit and <put your favorite joke here>." My current favorite is "... and #PresidentTweety is no prophet." Other versions use top prophets of Gawd Profit from such sources as Forbes, where the google is in the top 10, though the list is mostly dominated by financial speculators like his truly, the Mr McNamee himself. How much of the fault is thine own? However there are many insane aspects of corporate cancerism beyond the insane worship of money. For now I'll just reduce it to my second reaction: No corporate cancer can ever solve the "problem" of obtaining an infinite profit. The cancers can only devour each other until their host (AKA our society) is destroyed.

So let's consider the solution to the Facebook problem. Actually, this is part of a generalized solution to many of the problems the giant tech companies are creating. In short form, they should share some of the information they gather with us. Rather than using our own information against us to manipulate us, they should work with us to increase the mutual benefit to everyone. In Mr McNamee's recent interview with Bill Maher he actually worded it in terms of offering a better business model, but he didn't say anything to hint what his proposed concrete solution might be, if any, and in particular, I haven't been able to find anything along the lines I'm suggesting here...

Facebook's specific form of corporate cancerism is based on increasing the time spent on Facebook by the users. Facebook has no real incentive to increase the quality of that time, but just focuses on the quantity. It's just too complicated to consider the quality question because it's a matter of opinion. So my suggested solution is to let US decide what constitutes quality by revealing the earned public reputation of the people who are commenting and sharing on Facebook. People who have earned a negative reputation, for example by sharing fake news, will become increasingly invisible, and the qualitative value of the remaining material will increase. It's not like there's any shortage of material to share. It's the TIME that's ALWAYS limited.

I've actually glossed over lots of details such as dimensions of reputation, various symmetries, logarithmic scaling, and standardized representations of multiple dimensions, but my time is also limited. I'll leave off now with the ancient joke of additional detailed suggestions being available upon polite request.

Your recent writings on social media and especially Andreessen (2011) were very enlightening. thanks for taking the time to let us know that some of you now in positions of unprecedented global power actually give a damn.

Since the early days of Google, I've been waiting/watching for the global transition of power from nation states to Corporations... look out! damn, I missed it!

So, ... what I'm looking for now is late-, post-capitalist corporate hegemony that will take all 8-10 Billion of us into the post-scarcity future. I see clearly that y'all do not underestimate the power now on your hands - how will it play out? Profits? stakes have never been higher: think billions of humans; think fresh water; think hunger, think extinction of Nature.

To take shareholder, short term profits and turn them into benefits for the global population will take a miracle every day.todays tech billionaires have the power to move social evolution forward at break-neck speed. Lets leave the Boomer politicians in the dust.

IMO, true evolution will require the death of short-term profits, but with a social/eco conscience.

Can LLC's ever sacrifice Wall Street's 1/4ly profits for the greater good? Only if Corporate Governance Boards decide it will be so. You guys have the power to leave the politicians behind and to force social evolution ahead at a rate no one can even measure, much less predict.Take your power and use it - directly , and soon!mahalo, douglas

I share the authors view that monopolies on internet platforms are corrosive. The answer though is not going to be found in Davos. Like asking the people responsible for the financial crisis to manage the repair of the economy, 10 years later do you think they did? The answers to these problems will only be found from the re-emergence of movements aiming to restore democracy in our economy and societies as a whole.This is what we are doing at DiEM25 as well as the Sanders and Corbyn movements.

The investors who have made a lot of money appear to totally ignore the fact it is the responsibility of a business to not allow communication that enables terrorism, hatred, racism, videos of murder and suicide, peodphile pornography etc etc

And here is an article about Googles very basic failure. Google Play Store having an app aimed at children that featured a voiceover making threats to cut them with a knife. Is this the action of a responsible company, a total lack of checking anything?

Google has dropped 'Dont be Evil' for 'Do the Right Thing'. Ultimately, whether it's "Do the Right Thing" or "Don't Be Evil," there's a fundamental belief at Google that the company is the moral arbiter of what a just future should look like.

Unfortunately you have to ask if Google is made of 'The Right Stuff' for that job.

'Each new wave of technology increased productivity'. This may be true for particular processes within an economy but productivity has declined steadily overall.

'...enable the powerful to inflict harm on the powerless...' This is nothing new - I refer you to the role of IBM in data crunching demographic data to identify those judged undesirable by the Nazis. Their 'digital false realities in which existing beliefs become more rigid and extreme.'

'The challenges posed by Internet platform monopolies require new approaches beyond antitrust enforcement.' This cannot be done globally due to differing definitions of what is acceptable. That leaves national governance and the difficulty of global networks active with no effective boundaries. There is a further problem in the 'junkies' will want their fix and actively oppose control

One thing you have avoided mentioning is the issue of privacy. Perhaps that is because to all intents and purposes privacy is apparently in living extinction. Personally I regard that as a bigger issue than if social media junkies want to make themselves mad with social media binging, that at least is their choice

If social media giants cannot self regulate the obvious outcome is online taxation on them to fund external regulatory action. Self regulation relies on the business behaving appropriately which is why the financial sector blew it big time. At the end of the day regulatory function is a State responsibility and delegation in whatever direction does not remove that responsibility... 'investors shrugged' - most unwise but that is nothing new. Investors did not observe their obligations as shareholders with the big banks, they are part owners of the business and let banditry loose.

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